


Somewhere Only We Know

by snnycarisi



Category: IT (2017), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Songfic, its soft but kinda sad idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-29 00:54:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21146063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snnycarisi/pseuds/snnycarisi
Summary: Richie and Eddie sneak away from the losers before finding their tokens to talk about their future together. Loosely based on 'Somewhere Only We Know' by Keane





	Somewhere Only We Know

**Author's Note:**

> Is this canon compliant? Not really. But that’s okay. It’s just a neat song and I wanted to relate it to reddie so let me live. This is also my first reddie fic so uhhh pls be nice !

Leaning back against the solid tree trunk behind him, Richie hummed contently as he carded his fingers through Eddie’s thick curls. The repetitive motion was meant to help quiet his whirring mind, to give him something to tether himself to reality. It was meant to distract him from the million other things that could have caused him to start spiralling, his already quick mind going 50 miles over the speed limit of coherent thought. It did help a little, but what helped more was that it was  _ Eddie’s  _ hair he was playing with, and the weight of  _ Eddie’s  _ head in his lap and ticklish feeling of  _ Eddie’s  _ nimble fingers tracing the one of his palms that wasn’t preoccupied in  _ Eddie’s  _ hair. 

“When this is all over you’ll take me back to your mansion, right?” Eddie asked, planting a soft kiss to Richie’s palm. This tenderness was new, and as much as Richie loved the way they had poked and prodded each other as children, he could definitely get used to a bit of gentleness. 

“Of course.”

“Well I call the master bedroom, then. I’m assuming you’ve got, like, a billion other rooms so you can stay in one of them,” when Richie shot him a quizzical, but amused look, he added, “I don’t wanna sleep next to you, you snore.”

Richie pouted. “Well Eds, if it’s not me sleeping next to you it’ll one of my many monkey butlers that I can afford because I’m just that rich. So really it’s your choice.”

“Fuck off.” Eddie grinned, now taking Richie’s hand in his and interlocking their fingers. 

Richie tried to just focus on the weight of Eddie’s smaller hand gripping his own and softly rubbing his thumb over Richie’s. His stubborn mind, however, replayed the events of the past few days over and over inside his head. 

Like an old movie he’d seen too many times before, he watched himself step into the private room of the only decent restaurant in town. He saw himself catch sight of a smaller man, one he hadn’t seen for nearly thirty years and yet recognised instantly. He felt the way his breath hitched, and the feelings he’d been keeping locked up and contained in the back of his consciousness flooded out and hit him like a tsunami. He watched himself staring at Eddie, not even thinking about the consequences, feeling too much love and affection flowing through him to want to do anything but stare. And he saw Eddie staring back with that same glassy look in his eyes. 

He watched the two of them getting into separate cars but ending up in the same room, just holding each other and whispering to each other the things they had been too afraid to say when they were young. He saw neither man sleeping that night, just drinking in the feeling of being in each other’s arms, becoming addicted to the closeness and never wanting to let go. He felt himself focus in on that feeling of loving Eddie that had been festering inside him all this time without him realising it, growing stronger as the years went by, even if he didn’t know it. 

He saw the rest of the group disbanding, going their separate ways to look for their personal tokens. He felt the panic tightening his throat at the idea of being away from Eddie, even if it was just for a few hours. He saw the look on Eddie’s face that told him he felt the same. He watched the two of them sneaking off into the barrens, looking for a place- nowhere in particular- that they could be alone. Somewhere where the real world couldn’t touch them, and the insanity of having to fight an alien clown was far from their minds. He saw the desperate way he dragged Eddie with him through the greenery to their own secluded sanctuary. Fuck Mike, and fuck Bill, they could find their token later. 

Richie wasn’t usually a clingy person, or a desperate one, but realising the emptiness that had been hollowing him out for most of his life could be filled by Eddie’s presence just made him want to hold onto Eddie and never let him go. For the first time in his life, he was beginning to think that maybe he could be happy, and wouldn’t have to die alone and miserable. He refused to think about the real reason he had been so forward with his feelings, he wouldn’t let himself think of how likely it was that one of them wouldn’t make it out of the sewers alive, and how life could literally be too short to not let himself have this, even if it was only for a few days. 

Shaking the bad thoughts out of his mind, Richie looked down at Eddie, who was looking up at him with such a soft look on his face, Richie really did almost forget why they were there. For now, all that mattered was him and Eddie, Eddie and him, and the life they could have together when this was all over. 

“Hey, you know what? We should stop by an animal shelter on the way out of this fucking town, get a dog or somethin’.” Richie said, tugging his fingers a little more roughly this time through Eddie’s mop of curls. 

Eddie laughed, bright and full. “You can’t just ‘get a dog’, Rich, do you have anything you need in your house to look after a dog? Do you even know how to look after a dog?”

“I figured the monkey butlers would take care of it.” Richie deadpanned, Eddie pinching his thigh in response making Richie chuckle. 

“Well, fine. When we go back to California, we can do our research, get everything we need, and then we can get a dog and you can train your monkeys to look after it,” closing his eyes and properly melting into Richie’s touch, Eddie added, “I’ve always wanted a pomeranian.”

Richie removed his hand from Eddie’s hair and lifted Eddie’s free hand to his mouth, kissing each knuckle. He didn’t have a reason for doing so, he just wanted to, and right now, that was enough. 

But it was Eddie’s left hand, and the midday sunlight caught the gold band around his middle finger, making it shine brightly. It seems he wasn’t the only one to notice this, as Eddie jerked his hand away, shoving it into his pocket.

Neither man dared to comment, and the silence- which a minute ago had been peaceful- was now thick with tension. 

“I’m sorry, Rich. I’m really sorry.” Eddie whispered, his voice sounding as small as Richie felt. 

“No, hey, what are you apologising for? It’s okay. We’ll figure this all out, okay?” Suddenly, Richie was conscious of every move he made. Every readjustment of his glasses and every twitch of his muscles felt like a movement that might be enough to make Eddie jump right out of his lap. To combat this, he curled the hand that had been combing through Eddie’s hair around the back of his head, just holding him. 

“I don’t think we can, though.” Eddie stared straight ahead, avoiding Richie’s eyes. “I want to,” he added, “I want this so badly- I just don’t think I can. I’m a pussy. You know it, I know it,” he huffed out a humourless laugh, “my wife knows it.”

As Eddie now sat up and moved to sit further away from Richie, so they were still close but no longer touching, Richie felt as if his own guts had been ripped away too. 

“Also, think about it Richie, we don’t even know each other anymore. I don’t know your friends or where you like to go to dinner when you’re in the mood to celebrate, fuck, I don’t even know where you live aside from that it’s in California somewhere,” he was working himself up, Richie could tell, and he assumed he would be pulling his inhaler out any second (which he did, moments later, halting his rant to suck the plastic tube filled with nothing but air). “This isn’t my life. This isn’t me. No, what I need to do when this is all over is just pretend none of it ever happened and go back to my wife- which, by the way, isn’t even that bad. I know plenty of straight men that would be happier with a divorce. I’ll go back to her and do my job, which I’m fucking good at by the way, and maybe once a month I’ll have a few too many beers and wish I was with a man instead. But that’s okay. I’ve survived this long doing just that and I’m fine, right?” the ending of his little speech was so desperate, as if he was just begging Richie to tell him that, yes, his miserable life was just fine. Richie would never. 

“Are you done?” he asked, not exactly kindly. Eddie just nodded hesitantly. “Okay. Well first of all, you  _ do  _ know me, better than any of the fuckin’ friends I have back home. You, the losers, you’re my friends, always have been. You don’t need to know the fucking restuarants I eat at- what the fuck? That shit so doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.” he paused, making eye contact with the other man and shifting closer, closing the space Eddie had made between them. “And secondly, no. That’s not your life. You’re not happy, I can tell, and Eddie, you deserve to be happy. You owe it to yourself to at least try.”

Eddie said nothing, but his face said it all. Open, vulnerable, and utterly dismal. But behind all of that, affection shone through. 

“You know what? You’re brave as fuck, and you can do this. And because you’re such a freak for organisation, we can make a plan, deal?” Richie asked hopefully. 

“A plan?”

“Yeah. A one year plan. A whole year for you to get your shit together and ask Jabba The Hutt for a divorce. In that time I’ll come visit as much as you want- I can even fly you out to L.A. for a week or so if you want to.” reaching out touch cup Eddie’s cheek, Richie silently prayed this would be enough to convince him. He didn’t know what the fuck he would do if Eddie said no, he was going back to his old life. 

“Don’t call her that.” he said, the corners of his lips turning up into a smile, which was apparently contagious, as Richie began grinning too. 

“What about my job?” Eddie asked after a moment or so of once-again-comfortable silence. 

“There’s insurance in California, dickwad, I’m sure you could get a transfer or just join with a new firm. Or you could quit, I make enough to keep food on the table for both of us. Hey, you could even be like, my super sexy house-husband!”

“House-husband.” Eddie repeated under his breath, rolling his eyes and breaking into a fit of giggles, leaning back into Richie, who wrapped his arm around Eddie’s smaller frame almost on instinct. “So you want to get married, then?”

“Oh, are you proposing? Because I don’t see a ring…” Richie pretended to search the ground around where the pair sat, like Eddie had dropped this supposed ring in the grass. 

Eddie playfully shoved him, then flopped back into his side, burying his face (somewhat awkwardly due to his position) in the crook of his neck.

“No, asshole,” he started, muffled by Richie’s shoulder, “I mean, do you see us getting married one day?” 

“Eddie, baby, look at me,” Richie said, now serious. Eddie tilted his head up and met his eyes with his own big, brown doe eyes. “I want to be right here next to you until the day I die. I’ve spent nearly thirty years away from you, and that was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I never, ever want to do that again. If you don’t wanna get married or whatever because of Myra, then I get it. I just want to be with you.”

“Wow,” Eddie chuckled, a little breathless, “you really lasted through that whole spiel without cracking a single joke.” 

“Yeah, you wanna see how long I can last… somewhere else?” Eddie glared at Richie, who couldn’t wipe the shit-eating grin from his face. After a while, Eddie’s glare softened and was replaced with a good-natured smile. 

“I love you, Rich.” he said, catching Richie off-guard but not at all by surprise. “I don’t know  _ why _ , but I love you.”

“I love you too, asshole.” Richie replied, poking Eddie’s thigh before becoming serious again. “We will figure this out, okay? We can do it.”

Instead of replying, Eddie shifted his position and reached out to hold Richie’s face in both of his hands, pulling him into a kiss. It was warm and comfortable, like they’d been doing it their whole lives as opposed to the reality of them only having kissed for the first time the night before. It felt like home, as cheesy as that sounded, and Richie never wanted to give that up. 

Richie was so close to finally getting his happy ending, he just prayed the both of them would make it through the next few days. Just a few more days before the start of the rest of their lives. He couldn’t wait. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> please leave kudos and comment if u enjoyed or I made mistakes/could improve on anything !!
> 
> my twitter is @babyloveuris and u should read my au on there hehe
> 
> ok thanks !!!!!!


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